Turkey’s Recent Foreign Policy and Davutoğlu’s Role as an Islamic Intellectual

Istar Gozaydin

Dogus University, Istanbul, Turkey

Approaches to Political Islam
in Turkey: A Gramscian Challenge

Gorkem Altinors (University of
Nottingham, UK)

This presentation will
demonstrate how the rise of political Islam in Turkey is understood by the
mainstream academia and how Gramscian terminology (especially the integral
state) would help us to illustrate power relations among neoliberal
restructuring of the state within the state and civil society relations.
Basically, existing literature on political Islam will be critically evaluated
in this presentation. It would not be quite convenient to compare Turkey with
other Islamic states because its own sui generis features such as its early and
relatively high level of industrialisation, and its early but profound class
contradictions and conflicts within it. Therefore this research will be
primarily focussed on Turkish case and discussions among political Islam have
been limited within the literature on Turkey in this research. The literature
is separated into three basic subtitles as follows: state-centric approaches,
society-centric approaches and institution-centric approaches. In the first
one, there is an abstract assumption of strong state tradition which conflicts
with civil society as if they are antagonistic entities. The second one accepts
the strong state tradition as given, but there is more emphasis on civil
society within identity-based issues. Finally, third one provides limited
analysis of the fact since it is kept only within institutional level. The
presentation will draw a Gramscian understanding of the state after the
critical evaluation of mainstream approaches. In this context, it will be
questioned that how the state and civil society relations should be considered
in order to carry out a class-based analysis and how the rise of political
Islam in Turkey should be comprehended within neoliberalism.

Political Islam as Elite
Ideology in Turkish Foreign Policy-Making?

Zenon Tziarras (University of
Warwick, UK)

It has been widely debated
whether the AKP and especially its leaders are ideologically driven. In this
context, much has been written about how the writings of FM Davutoğlu, and the
speeches of PM Erdoğan and President Gül, prove Turkey’s Islamic orientation
and its leaders’ distinct perception of the West. Thus, although the AKP
officially calls itself ‘conservative democrat’, many authors try either to
prove the party’s ideological Islamist roots, or support its democratic
character. To the end of contributing to this debate, this paper tries to
answer two fundamental questions: what is the ideology of the AKP elite? To
what extent does the AKP elite ideology influence Turkish foreign policy (TFP)?
In answering the first question we first clarify whether there is an ideology
or not; then, we make a distinction between the ideology of the AKP as a whole
and the ideology of the policy-makers and officials, as expressed publicly. To
examine the impact of ideology we empirically look at TFP towards Israel and
Syria. The conclusion is that the AKP elite does have an ideology, based on
political Islam; yet, its impact on foreign policy is limited as it is
constrained by various material interests.

Turkey’s Political Islam and
the West

Galip Dalay is working for
Political Research Department of SETA Foundation and pursuing a PhD degree in
International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

From the Welfare Party (WP) to
the Justice and Development Party (JDP), foreign policies of Islamic parties
have attracted disproportionate scrutiny. One of the focal points has been
their approach to the West and Western-oriented institutions. This
article, based on Jack S. Levy’s concept of learning in foreign policy, is
divided into periods to better show the evolution of foreign policy
perspectives: the Welfare Party period, the Virtue Party in transition, and the
first (2002 – 2006), second (2006 – 2010/11), and third (2011 - ) periods of
JDP rule. I argue that from WP rule until the JDP’s first period in power,
these parties’ approach to the West has been largely motivated by domestic
considerations for different reasons. The WP defined the West as its Islamist
identity’s “other” and sought to create an alternative framework; the JDP
regarded the West as an instrument to gain legitimacy, both domestically and
internationally. Yet, in its second term, the JDP attempted to balance its
Western focused foreign policy with alternative complementary frameworks to
achieve a more prominent international role. However, the JDP’s third term has
been shaped by the Arab Spring and characterised by uncertainty about Turkey’s
relations with the west. Hence, JDP rule has seen the emergence of a newly
outward-facing political Islam in Turkey.

Turkey’s Recent Foreign Policy
and Davutoğlu’s Role as an Islamic Intellectual

Prof. Dr. İştar Gözaydın is a
professor of law and politics at Doğuş University, Istanbul.

There is little doubt that Ahmet
Davutoğlu, Turkey’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs of pro-Islamic AKP (Adalet
ve Kalkınma Partisi), is the major driving force of Turkey’s ‘proactive and
multi-dimensional’ foreign policy, even though the foundations for his regional
foreign policy go back to 1980’s. Yet, it was Ahmet Davutoğlu who embedded this
Ottoman reference into a reconsideration of the role of the West and of Turkey
from a decidedly Islamic or intellectual-Islamist position. Prof. Dr. Ahmet
Davutoğlu, is also an academic of political science that has published several
boks, and articles. Especially his book Strategic Depth is a very influential
book in Turkey's foreign policy orientation. He is very influential in the
military, academic, and government triangle shaping Turkish foreign policy.
Professor Davutoğlu was granted a title of ambassador by the joint decision of
President then Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister at that time Abdullah Gül
in 2003. As an ambassador Davutoğlu was one of the leading actors on behalf of
the Turkish government during the shuttle diplomacy for the settlement of 2008
Israel–Gaza conflict. In this paper I will scrutinize through his works how
Davutoğlu as a scholar perceives the fields of Islam and international
relations.